What I want
What I want
I have heard a lot of late about the what people want in life/relationships recently. I don’t think people realize how much I don’t really care about that, and if I did, I don’t want to discuss it.
What has thrown me for a loop, is a semantics argument on what people are looking for in their relationships. I was in some class here recently where we were having a relationship building and development discussion, the teacher steered the conversation to dating and asked what people looked for in a relationship, the answer that directed the course of the conversation was “The right guy for me’ given by a girl in the front of the room. The teacher than had a lesson on the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’, which ended up with that in relationships and social settings we look a lot for ‘the’ right person, crowd, place, or whatever and in reality we should be looking for ‘a’ right person, place, etc.
The philosophy there is that we will never be happy looking for a singular person that meets all the criteria, but that we can be happy looking for a particular type of person in a wide crowd of potential people, but also that our attitudes change from having to be perfect to working on individual problems that come up. In all it was a great lecture that I felt I learned a lot from and was able to apply to my life.
So back to the past week and the conversations about relationships, I spent the better part of a morning earlier this week, talking with a friend about the silliness in my mind over the list she had created for guys she would date. Particularly the qualifications she had listed. Of the qualities listed, I laughed at the notion that the guy had to be taller than her [qualified by at least 3 inches] and that he had to weigh more than her. My laughter at her list wasn’t surprising nor was the conversation we had [with me joking about most of the list].
I felt I learned something from the discussion though. Of her list the only thing she ended up deciding that wasn’t a bit trivial in the long term was holding a temple recommend. [She ended breaking up the list into categories]. After we got done talking about her list she asked about mine, which I promptly stated my usual two comments brunette and not from Utah, but after talking about trivial requirements with her, I quickly admitted that they were rather trivial.
In the time that has transpired since that discussion, and due to the fact that I have way too much time between moments where I have to be doing something, I have been working on a sheet of paper what my list would look like if I were to put down the qualifications for dating someone. I have a sheet of paper with a title on it taped to my wall, otherwise, I have come up with nothing. It occurred to me that I think in the end I want to be needed and need to be wanted.
I have wasted much time pursuing after things only to realize at some point in all of that I was doing nothing with no potential for returns. All I was doing was spending time and money so other would see the rewards of my efforts and this soured my opinion of people and social situations more. Over the past few months, I have had a shift in the mental paradigm of what I was will and what I was not willing to be a part of. Particularly it deals with those friends that don’t do anything but hang-out but at the same time are dating. I have gotten to the point of don’t include me with them.
I think what has gotten me more worked up than anything else is the lack of, or maybe even the inability to have control of what is mine. I do mean that in whatever terms possible. I cant seem to watch my TV without someone coming in and trying to railroad it and change what is being watched. I have given up trying to watch any of my black and white movies because once I do, the inevitable outcome is that my roommates have friends come over and no one according to them wants to watch a black and white. [Except me who started it, but that doesn’t matter.] So here I sit, and I am trying to figure out what I want and what I need in order to get things done.
I am looking at my goal of being graduated with a bachelors by the end of the Fall semester. It looks good, but at the same time, it could go haywire between now and then. Eighteen hours of course work to go and I should be done with my degree. I still have a lot to do between now and then, particularly I need to work towards taking the GRE.
I need to go back to work, not like I have a lot to accomplish, just need to focus on my task or two to do.
I guess I can sum this all up with I want to be needed and I need to be wanted